Waking Up
by Umbrik
Summary: In the aftermath of a loosing battle against the overwhelming Scourge forces led by the death knight Arthas Menethil, Umbrik falls unconscious to wake up in a tomb surrounded by countless undead. As he paves his way to safety, he stumbles upon an unlikely conversational partner and comes to a horrible realization...


Waking Up

Chill. Dark. Dull whisper. Umbrik was slowly recovering his sensations, but they felt hollow, as if through a filter. The chill was coming from under his back. Manifestly, he was lying on top of a stone, a relatively flat stone, but still rough and uncomfortable. It was dark because his eyes were closed shut - it felt as if his eyelids were nailed to each other. But what the hell was that whisper?

He started twisting and turning his body to see if he could still move. A piece of stone cut his back quite deeply, but for some reason without causing pain. He sensed his hands crossed over his abdomen and proceeded to clench his unusually scrawny fingers, which felt extra hard. He gradually flexed his elbows, knees, and toes. In a few minutes his entire body was shaking, like it was puppeteered by a shamanic totem. Suddenly, his survival instinct stiffed his movements. The whisper was approaching.

Umbrik could now use his hands, his feet, and if necessary his teeth, but he didn't want to meet the danger blindly. He focused all of his strength on opening his eyes. Every attempt at unsticking his eyelids, even though surprisingly painless, felt like cutting through them with a saw. He finally regained his vision and noticed that he was in a closed chamber. Most of it was covered in darkness, but there were three burning torches on the wall, illuminating stone platforms, placed over sarcophaguses, probably like the one under his body. At the end of the chamber there were stairs, leading upwards. _It's a damn tomb!_

A set of scrawny fingers emerged from the dark, slowly approaching his location. The whisper was coming from their direction. Little by little, the bones, from which the fingers were sticking out, appeared as well. They were attached to a low-bodied, hunchbacked creature, covered in rags. The creature's head completed the horrifying picture – a bluish skin, a hanging broken jaw, a hole instead of a nose, and yellowish eyes without pupils. Its long hair, dangling from only half of its head, was filthy, matted, and covered with shit.

"A damn zombie!" Umbrik uttered a war cry and instantly found himself standing, ready to smack. He looked around and spotted the closest torch, which was an arm's length away.

The zombie stopped, lowered its arms, and tilted its head sideways like a curious puppy. Umbrik didn't intend to wait for a better opportunity. He grabbed the torch with both hands and jumped. While he was flying in the air, he stretched his arms backwards in order to achieve maximum impact on strike. His powerful swing stuck the torch right at the enemy's bullseye exactly when his feet met the ground. The creature fell still, turning into what it was supposed to be by nature – a dead body. Umbrik pulled the torch from its burning head and illuminated his surroundings. He recognized his dagger lying on the floor, which he must have dropped before falling unconscious. He sheathed it to his belt, threw the torch away, and started sneaking quietly towards the tomb's exit.

On the outside things didn't look any better. An entire horde of undead was swarming the yard around the tomb, roaming about with no purpose or direction. There were so many of them that their shapeless bodies were constantly slamming each other, without any sign of comprehension on their expressionless faces. It seemed that the Lich King had succeeded in his endeavor and had turned Lordaeron into a living cemetery of mindless mooching zombies, which have no idea what to do with their lives.

"Not much different than the old Lordaeron," Umbrik thought, as he appeared out in the open.

To his relief, he guessed correctly – the undead payed no attention to his approach. Evidently, there wasn't a lich or a mage nearby to control them, which probably meant that at least for the moment they were harmless. This gave him some time to find a safe house and plan his next move. He started moving carefully through the crowd of undead, while thinking over his situation. How long had he been unconscious? Was there any human resistance to the Scourge left at all on Azeroth? Had the dwarves from the mountain fortress Ironforge managed to push the undead away? Or would the only salvation be found oversees in Kalimdor, where the night elves would have become the last guardians of civilization? So many questions, for which there wouldn't be answers, unless Umbrik did some recon work or met another living soul.

Suddenly he stopped dumbfounded. At first glance before him there was just another creature with repulsive appearance, bluish skin, and yellow sparkling eyes. It, however, contrasted the others in several clearly distinguishable characteristics. First, it was dressed in clean and tidy dark purple garments, likely the past property of a nobleman, or a citizen with a respectable profession. Second, the creature seemed remarkably hygienic – its head was carefully shaved and its face had been recently washed, almost shining. Third and most puzzling, unlike its peers, it was simply standing in a tranquil manner, while holding a scroll… in which it was writing!

Umbrik simply couldn't resist. He checked his pockets and found a little flash powder, which he could use to distract his enemies and vanish in case things got messy. It, of course, would have been invaluable for his upcoming adventures, but despite his common sense, he strode swiftly towards the object of his curiosity. After all, he might be able to pull out some information from it.

He advanced towards the undead, which was writing calmly in the scroll, without showing in any way that it had noticed the approach. Umbrik stopped about a meter away from it and started pondering how to proceed. The undead, however, came first:

"Name?" it asked unceremoniously, continuing to focus mostly on its writing.

"What?"

"Name… What's your name?"

"And who might you be?" Umbrik couldn't believe that he was talking to that thing.

"Another one who doesn't know his name… Or answers the question with a question!" the undead was evidently angry, but this wasn't enough to remove its eyes from the scroll. "Either way, we should have thrown you in the fire with the rest, instead of waiting you to wake up for so long. What an ingrate!"

"Wh…"

"Anyway… I am the undertaken Mordo and I deal with the newcomers. Name?"

"Newcomers?"

Mordo finally made eye contact with Umbrik and uttered a sinister laugh. He kept looking for a few seconds, smiled cunningly, and asked:

"Have you… looked in a mirror since you woke up?"

"A mirror?" Umbrik scratched his chin with his right hand, while secretly groping for his dagger with his left. "Well, to be honest, as much as I admire my looks, my priorities shifted slightly this morning, as I woke up in a tomb with walking corpses, some of which speak, scrabble strange symbols with their godless hands, and even dare to teach me etiquette. I have dispatched so many of your kind that I will cut your head without even flinching, but before I do that, out of curiosity, I wanted to ask... Who or what the hell are you, why the hell are you able to speak, and what the hell are you babbling about?"

"I see… Let me help you," Mordo reached under his bosom, pulled out a round mirror, about a span long, and offered it to his collocutor.

Umbrik wondered whether or not to thrust his dagger into the insulant creature's throat already, but grabbed the mirror anyway and looked into it. The horrifying truth cut through him like a cleaver – in the reflection appeared an angry face with bluish skin and yellowish sparkling eyes without pupils, covered with filthy and matted, probably black under the layers of brown, shaggy hair. _Shit!_

3


End file.
